the susie solution

My dad had a saying. Actually he had LOTS of sayings. The older I get, the more of them I find myself using. When a whole string of things went wrong one right after the other, he’d say “Some days, ya just can’t win fer losin’!”  Most of us know it as, “Man, this just ISN’T my day!” We’ve all been there.

You sleep through your alarm, so you’re running late. You speed a bit trying to get to work on time, and you get pulled over. While the cop is writing the ticket, he notices that your registration is expired. You sit in a meeting in the morning and spill your coffee. On the boss. You realize you forgot the lunch you’d packed the night before.   It’s sitting right on top of the presentation folder for the big meeting this afternoon. There’s a huge traffic jam on the freeway, so you’re an hour late getting home, so there isn’t time for dinner before you have to head off for your kid’s softball game.   During the game, your keys fall out of your pocket and land somewhere on the ground under the bleachers, amid the piles of peanut shells, candy wrappers and spilled soda pop. You get back to your car to find someone left a new dent on the bumper. You finally make it home, get the kids in bed, get yourself into your PJs so you can crawl in bed and read…. and find the dog threw up on your pillow. Not. My. Day.

On the other hand, sometimes everything seems to be going right. In November of 2013, I was looking forward to 2014 very much.   My youngest was still home, but gainfully employed at last. My cousin I take care of was relatively stable. My oldest daughter, who had been facing placenta previa (a serious condition of pregnancy; go look it up), got the news that it had resolved and her pregnancy had been downgraded from high risk back to low risk; Gramsie (that’s me) no longer had to be ready to take on major care of the two and four year olds for months of bedrest. My own health was good, other than the setback of taking a fall in September that had derailed my exercise routine for a few months. I had lots of ideas for things I wanted to do in 2014: write, write, write; organize family photos; sew; plan Gramsie days with my grandprincesses; go hiking with my dh; get projects done on the house; work on my garden. Yep, 2014 looked to be marvelous.

In January of this year, I saw quite a few posts on my Facebook feed making claims “2015 is going to be MY YEAR!”, or encouraging others “Remember folks, this is YOUR YEAR!” I’m not entirely sure what they meant by it, but frankly, I just rolled my eyes as I thought about what happened to me LAST year. Contrary to how 2014 LOOKED to be shaping up, on December 6, 2013, my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer that had spread to her ribs, spine and brain. She died almost eleven months later, on October 29^th of 2014. I was her primary caregiver, basically living at her home for her final three months.  During that same time, the cousin I also serve as caregiver for had her own series of crises. The two either tag- or double-teamed me pretty much non-stop for the duration of my mom’s illness. I did a fair amount of writing, keeping up a CaringBridge journal about Mama’s journey Homeward, and for the last three months of her life, nearly daily emails to a circle of family and close friends, but I had little time to do writing for my own purposes, such as this blog. My garden went untended. Only one or two minor house projects got done. I only half-jokingly said that I had no life of my own – I had OTHER peoples’ lives. MY year? Not exactly.

Not only experience, but Scripture, warns against being too cock-sure of ourselves. In James 4, it says : “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance.”

Sometimes we DO get to go to that town, and we DO get to spend a year there and trade, and we DO make a profit. Other times, we’ll go to that town and spend a year and trade and….. end up bankrupt. Maybe we’ll get to go to that town and spend a year … trying to get a business license. Maybe we’ll get to go that town, and …. have to leave after a couple of months. Maybe we’ll set out for that town, and find the bridge is out or get set on by robbers. Maybe we’ll break our leg before we can even start packing!

We have no way of knowing . We don’t. But we sure act like we do, don’t we? Sometimes we act like God owes it to us to honor the plans we make, but the more we claim possession of our time, the more we set ourselves up for indignation, frustration, and even anger when our plans go south.

Most Westerners know the division of the historical calendar into “B.C.” and “A.D.” Many people could correctly identify “B.C.” as standing for the words “before Christ”. “A.D.”, however, is nearly always mistakenly defined as an abbreviation of “after death”, when in fact it stands for the Latin “Anno Domini” – the Year of Our Lord. In medieval times, the term often used was “Anno Gratiae”, or “Year of Grace.” The two were sometimes combined so that you may read in old English of a date such as “June the nineteenth in the year of Our Lord’s Grace, fifteen hundred forty-three.” Isn’t that a marvelous way of looking at our calendar?

When I said last year that I didn’t have any life of my own, I was right – but it would be a mistake to think that I ever will! As a Christian, my life is NOT my own.  What would I do with a life of my own, anyway?  I’m not so sure but that I’d make quite a hash of it in short order.

I don’t want MY year – but I’ll sure take another year of Our Lord’s Grace!